*photography: >>photo essays: stories of the stolen generations, uluru: the waiting mothers

Aboriginal people witnessed the forced removal of their children when white authorities, invested with the powers of the national government, arrived unannounced to their desert camps. Relatives of stolen children often had no knowledge where their children had been taken, or what became of them.

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These figurative sculptures depict childhood experiences recalled by members of the stolen generations* from Uluru, central Australia. Their stories were collected by Mutitjulu elder Bob Randall from his own personal experience and that of his peers, and interpreted by sculptor Hazel MacKinnon. Each sculpture was photographed on location where the story originally occurred, spanning 500 km from Uluru to Alice Springs.

*The term 'stolen generations' refers to Aboriginal Australian children who were forcibly removed from their families under national government policy. It is estimated that between 1910 and 1970, over 50 000 chidren were thus removed and placed in church or government institutions. They were often raised hundreds of kilometres from their tribal homelands, without further contact with their families and indigenous culture, including their tribal languages and lands. This project was a collaboration between Bob Randall, Hazel MacKinnon and Kia Mistilis, aimed at promoting better community understanding of our shared history.